Various practical addenda from Plataea 2022

Well, Plataea 2022 ended on Saturday and although there's a lot to be said, I'm limiting myself to some observations to bear in mind about all the stuff I brought out there:

-  A four-inch-wide (internal), eight-foot-long PVC pipe with caps held on by duct tape makes a very protective package for spears, but it's so heavy and awkward (particularly when you already have two suitcases and a rifle case with your bows and arrows in it), and expensive to ship, that I wound up leaving both it and all my spears spears with other reenactors who felt they'd have a use for them and less difficulty/expense transporting them.  I will not travel with spears in the future.  If I send any more to Greece, I'll send them well ahead of time by the cheapest service available and leave them with a trusted friend.

-  Under the (to my Pennsylvanian standards) quite aggressive heat and sun, the film of linseed oil-beeswax sealer I applied on top of the oil paint on my crescent shield softened and rubbed off.  Specifically, the area on top of the dark red ochre-painted part of the shield; the area on top of the white edge was somewhat more resistant (presumably because the film is transparent and the dark paint heated up in the sun faster).  The same mixture used as a paint binder on my new gorytos was also more resistant, but did soften after prolonged exposure, allowing thicker bits to be scraped off.  The rosin-beeswax glue attaching the leather facing of my new akinakes scabbard also softened.  By contrast, anything treated, bound or sealed with only linseed oil or rosin (the ochre paint on the shield, the spear handles, and the sinew wrappings of my arrows) were all fine.  So basically anything containing beeswax was in danger of melting.

-  The buff leather weapon belt performed admirably.  The chrome-tanned belt sagged and became uncomfortable.  I'm not sure whether this is because the holes I punched in the buff belt allowed it to be laced tighter or because it's a thicker leather, but I suspect both.  The belt being nice and snug was definitely helpful.

-  As I suspected, the smaller bow and commensurately smaller gorytos and arrows were much easier to carry.  The search for an accurately Classical-styled bow of less than 36 inches strung continues.

-  The 1/2-inch-thick wooden crescent shield is at least as heavy as larger wicker ones in the same style.  This, too, needs improvement.  I also threw together a round wicker mat with pelta-style grips and a suede facing, which at 16 inches in diameter (about the size of the smallest Scottish targes, and barely large enough to cover my arm from elbow to knuckles with fingers closed around the handgrip) is so light I barely notice I'm wearing it, but I'd have felt much, much better about it if it were crescent-shaped.

-  A 12-ounce ceramic bottle, while convenient to carry, is only around a quarter as much water as I need to drink over the course of a Greek midsummer day in the field.  Also, water left out becomes as hot as the surrounding air in just a few hours.  What I wound up doing was to take a two-liter plastic bottle of water and keep it overnight in the hotel minifridge where it half-froze, wrapped it in spare clothing and kept it in my tent in my suitcase.  That way I could still at least refill my ceramic bottle with slightly cool water by the end of the day.  A proper cooler with ice blocks would've been better.

-  Food must be kept elevated or it will be invaded by ants.  A table of some kind, a crate, a box, anything will help.

Ceramic food bowl by Pamela Cummings

Carinated pots and bowls with wide, steep flared rims became common in West Asia in the Iron Age.  Moorey in his Deve Hüyük catalogue attributes the style's origin to the Neo-Assyrian empire.  They were made of pottery, metal, glass and even stone.  While not uniquely Achaemenid, they serve as a good example of a kind of foodware that is often found at Achaemenid sites, and thus will prove useful both as an educational display and, of course, any time you need to eat at an event that's open to the public.  Their international status should also make them more versatile for portrayals of people from elsewhere in West Asia in our time period.

I commissioned this bowl from Pamela Cummings, the Harrisburg, PA-based artisan who also made my water bottle last year.  It's primarily meant as a personal bowl for barley, stew, porridge (I've recently become a big fan of pease porridge) and other spoon foods, but it could also serve as a small common bowl for nuts or dates.  We designed it to be about the size of a cereal bowl, about 4-1/2 inches (11.4cm) across at the narrow carinated point, 6 inches (15.2cm) across at the rim, and 3 inches (7.6cm) deep on the outside.  It's based on a number of finds, both metal and ceramic, from Persepolis and Deve Hüyük.

In construction, it closely matches the water bottle.  Its walls are of medium thickness - thicker than china but thinner than, for instance, the heavier styles of American stoneware.  Also like the bottle, it's made of a faintly speckled, greyish-brown clay with a matte glaze to resemble unglazed, burnished pottery, yet meet modern food safety standards.  (If your local potter works in different types of clay, buff and terra cotta would also be acceptable colors.)  The compact, deep shape and the rim make it convenient to hold, but it has enough of a flat base to sit on a table.

Also as before, I enjoyed working with Pamela on this project, and highly recommend her work.  Her prices are also very reasonable for such important camp items.

Ceramic water bottle by Pamela Cummings

Over the years, I've come to see pottery as a somewhat neglected area of reenactment gear.  We focus on war to a great extent, but you can't present a realistic image of ancient peoples without also showing how they lived day-to-day, and in that sense, the objects of day-to-day life are just as important as weapons.  Indeed, the majority of individuals would have used weapons rarely if at all, while everyone would have used wares for eating and drinking on a daily basis.

For some years, I've wanted a ceramic water container to replace the leather ones I used at Marathon 2011 and 2015.  Ceramic bottles and canteens are much better-documented than the molded leather ones, and a simple wheel-thrown jug is of comparable price or even less expensive than a commercially-made leather costrel.  (Not to mention, waxed leather can be damaged if left out in the sun - ceramic won't be.)  A water container of a convenient size for carrying is essential, so it's my view that that's the logical place to start your pottery collection.  You need to drink, of course; why duck into a tent to sneak a sip out of a plastic bottle when you could be drinking out of an authentic container in public?

There is some reproduction pottery on the market for Classical reenactors, but as usual, for material specific to the Persian empire, you'll need to go custom most of the time.  I commissioned this bottle from Pamela Cummings of Harrisburg, whom I met at the 2018 Crafts in the Meadow fair at Tyler Park last October.  Pam was a pleasure to work with, and very understanding and accommodating as we worked out the design, delivery and payment.

Pam based the bottle on several finds from Persepolis, found in that ever-useful repository of information, Oriental Institute Publications 69.  I requested it in a 12-ounce capacity, the same as a can of soda.  We consciously deviated from the originals in two ways:  1)  they were made of brown clay with several partial washes of various dull colors, but to simplify things, this reproduction doesn't have additional colors, and 2)  the originals, as with almost all Achaemenid pottery, were unglazed, whereas Pam applied a clear matte glaze, both to make hers waterfast and more comfortable to drink out of (people often find that unglazed pottery is rough against the lips).  While it may look glossy in my photographs, in person it has a more mild sheen and could perhaps pass for being lightly burnished, which is also a technique known in Achaemenid pottery.

Pam normally includes a small initial stamp on her works.  Understanding that some reenactors don't want this on their gear, she offered to leave it off.  Personally, I think that if a trademark isn't large and distracting, it's not a problem - no one thinks we're eating and drinking out of actual ancient museum pieces anyway - and I see it as a segue to discussing how we go about obtaining our items and the fact that these ancient arts are still very much alive.

A bottle like this can be stopped with a tapered cork from the hardware store, and cork is a fairly ancient material - the oak species it comes from is native to the Western Mediterranean - though I'm not sure exactly how widespread it was in our period.  I suspect a waxed wood stopper would be more authentic for an item coming from the Iranian plateau.

"Parthian chickpeas" from Pass the Garum

And just like last week, I'm more than a couple days late passing this along:

Pass the Garum: Parthian Chickpeas

"Parthian chicken" from Pass the Garum

Okay, so it's awfully tangential to this blog, but it's so nifty...  :

Pass the Garum: Parthian Chicken

A drink before we decide

We have neither recipes nor detailed descriptions of the foods eaten in Achaemenid Persia, but we do know a lot about the ingredients available and something of what was made from them.  Common foods distributed according to the Persepolis tablets include barley, wheat, beer, sheep and goats.  Wheat flour was made into bread, doubtless similar to modern flatbreads (nan), and the Greeks speak of Persian cakes or pastries.  Fruits and nuts native to the area include figs, dates, pistachios and walnuts.  According to Herotodus, meals were generally light and followed with many desserts.

He also notes that at birthday parties, it was customary to serve whole roasted beasts:  oxen, horses, camels or donkeys if one could afford it, or otherwise small cattle.  Royalty and nobles enjoyed hunting, both in the wilderness and in royal paradises (parks), by which they also trained for war.  Pierre Briant notes that Persians seem to have eaten more meat than Greeks.

The ancient Mediterranean was wine country, and Persia was no exception.  Wine remained important in Persian culture even after Islamification, right up until the IRI banned it.  Herodotus claims that Persians would deliberate on important issues while drunk, then reconsider the decision while sober; if they were sober when they first considered the problem, they reconsidered it while drunk.  (Jona Lendering suggests that this is in fact a misinterpretation of the haoma ceremony.)  While the Middle East is best-known for grape wine, 2nd-century military author Polyaenus in Strategems wrote that half the wine consumed at the king's table in Babylon and Susa was palm wine.  Wine and beer were considered important sources of nutrition; kurtaš women who had just given birth were given extra rations of one or the other.

No one may vomit or urinate in another's presence: this is prohibited among them.
- Herodotus, I.133

The royalty ate very richly, as attested both by the brief entries of the Persepolis tablets, where large amounts of animals, flour, oil and wine are sent wherever a member of the family travels, and the lavish descriptions of Greek writers like Polyaenus, who provides several vertigo-inducing pages of livestock, game, waterfowl, veggies, fruit and nuts, oils, herbs and dairy products described as "the Great King's lunch and dinner."

Food at reenactment camps takes quite a bit of work simply because of the numbers of people being fed.  At the Marathon 2011 camp dinners, grills were set up on the beach well away from the treeline.  Arrangements for keeping meat cold (or allowing the time to buy it right before cooking) and having enough water for washing and drinking have to be made ahead well ahead of time.  In order to be served fresh, vegetables were trimmed by hand shortly before.  The upshot of this is that most of the food has to be kept pretty simple.

Next up:  The case for bows.